I had to send ours back, but I'm trying to find one to include when we launch the smartphone bench. What I have now represents what I had on hand, but I'm equally interested in seeing Droid 2 or Droid X scores at 1 GHz. I'm trying to snag one. ;)

We need to see the benchmark results adjusted for screen resolution. The simplest way to do it is take the screen resolution and multiply the X and the Y and then multiply that by the FPS score then divide by 1 million.

For example, the iPad 4 scored 4.6 and has a resolution of 1024x768. So the "real" score would be 1024 x 768 x 4.6 / 1000000 = 3.62. And the 3GS is 320x480x14.5/1000000 = 2.23. By doing this we will easily see in the graphs that the iPad is 62% faster than the 3GS.Reply

The problem with this (unlike desktop/laptop computers) is that the phone is going to run native resolution ALL the time. You can't simply lower the res and get better performance, so while the numbers are skewed, I'd argue they are accurate.

What obviously has to happen then is games made for a higher resolution device such as the iPhone4 will have to have lower-quality textures/effects to maintain playable while the lower res phones can have higher-quality textures/effects.

Similar to the current (or maybe a bit ago) desktop gaming where people with >24" monitors were having to keep some of the eye candy off (high levels of AA for instance) while those of us gaming on 19" screens could have everything maxed out. It's personal preference whether bigger (with less quality) is better.Reply

I totally agree that the numbers should be kept as is, since that is how they will be viewed. It's not theoretical figures we're trying to see, it's actual performance.

It's important to note that certain devices have higher resolution, thus the fps may be affected, but the visual quality should seem better.

Though, it would be nice to have an indexed theoretical comparison as mentioned. Something that uses the lowest common denominator so we can compare the performance in terms of resolution. Of course, there are many factors that would affect this index (memory size, memory speed, gpu, cpu, available nand, screen type, screen resolution, etc), but since we're lumping the memory/gpu/cpu all into one category, the resolution is the only other variable that will mostly affect the performance. - I'm curious to see what kind if a correlation truly does exist.Reply

Anyway, it would be good of AT to normalize the benchmarks for resolution. It seems like the only fair way to compare them. Of course, the raw data is important as well, but quadrupling resolution is certainly an important distinction.

I'm running the full suite on my LG Optimus S right now and it's doing pretty well - much better Egypt score than the Optimus One.Reply

yep, they kept the same GPU but increased the resolution A LOT. this thing is looking bad for apple, because the new hummingbird is so much faster... if only the developers for android could leverage performance....Reply

For one, I'd like to see how Asphalt 5 performs, but it seems frame-capped on or under-optimised for the Galaxy S. Give it a benchmark mode and you could compare the iPhones and Android devices in at least one title.

A benchmark for Angry Birds would likely be a waste of time as it's smooth enough.Reply

Hello AT, the screenshots in the article show some serious rendering glitches. My guess is that part of the graphics memory is damaged. This is NOT how the benchmark should look. On which device did you get these results?

Why no Tegra2 benchmarks? LG's Optimus 2X utilizes it, as does an upcoming phone from Motorola. And that's excluding the tablets that current are or soon will be using it: Viewsonic G, RIM Playbook, Notion Ink ADAM, Samsung's Galaxy S-2 Tab, and Motorola's tablet that was shown running Honeycomb.

So.. why no Tegra2 results. We already know it will likely slaughter everything, but I'd like to know by how much. Reply

If you are looking to add a Droid 2 to the mix, use the Droid 2 Global. This is what will be replacing the Droid 2 and it runs at 1.2 ghz. Right now they're both being sold but Moto's plan is to let the Droid 2 Global replace the Droid 2 as stock sells out.Reply

The disparity in actual performance between the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4/iPad is exactly why I'm very skeptical of a *major* upgrade to the display in the next iPad. Anything approaching "Retina" resolutions (300dpi) would mean the panel would far exceed 1080p and there is no way that the current-gen or even next-gen SoCs could push enough pixels for playable framerates at that resolution--probably not even Tegra2. If 1024x768 is 0.7MP and 132ppi then to get even to 200ppi you'd need something at least 1550x1162 (more realistically it would be either 1400x1050 and approx 180ppi or 1600x1200 and 206ppi) while a full 300ppi is a ridiculous 2325x1743--almost the same number of pixels as a 30" lcd monitor! So for the sake of argument, let's say they go with 1600x1200 to give the iPad a nice 206ppi. That is a 1.92MP display and a 144% increase in pixel count! I haven't seen any verifiable performance tests of Tegra2 and current SoCs, but there is a chance that nvidia's silicon could be up to the task; however, that would mean Apple would have to abandon their own silicon, which I don't see happening. Battery life would also most likely be abysmal, and the cost of such a large high-res screen would make it infeasible. Hence, I don't think we'll see any major upgrades to the iPad screen any time soon and these benchmarks show why.Reply

People have already talked about iPhone 4/iPad performance against the iPhone 3GS not looking good due to the Retina Display, but I wonder why the gap closes in the OpenGL ES 1.1 results? Perhaps the iPhone 3GS is bandwidth or CPU bound in the simpler OpenGL ES 1.1 test vs. the iPhone 4/iPad being shader and ROP bound in the OpenGL ES 2.0 test? It's interesting that the iPhone 4/iPad seem to overtake a few Android phones in the OpenGL ES 1.1 test which probably indicates different levels of OpenGL ES stack and driver optimizations.

Personally, I think it would be useful to supplement the raw results with comparisons normalized to the device resolution. This will give an indication of raw GPU power and level of OpenGL ES stack and driver optimization between devices. This is especially useful to compare progress between Android devices running different OS versions.

As well, for the iPhone 4, these results give credence to the suggestion that in some cases it might be beneficial to stick with the 480x320 resolution but implement AA rather than go 960x480. The iPhone 4's 64-bit memory controller with double the memory bandwidth should be very helpful in making AA viable and sticking with a common 480x320 resolution should allow a common code path between 3rd gen and 4th gen devices which is also tempting for developers.Reply

Oh, I don't suppose the OpenGL ES 1.1 test can be run on the previous MBX Lite based devices? It would give an interesting point of comparison of how much progress has been made in the last 2 years.Reply

Would have liked to see HTC Desire in these charts as it's very popular, at least here in Europe. Also, the correct name for Samsung Fascinate is Samsung I9000 Galaxy S as Fascinate is just a re-branded version for Verizon and a name completely unknown to global readers.Reply

Obviously, the number of pixels in the screen matters a great deal. I've calculated the number of pixels on the screen, and using the performance data given have calculated the number of megapixels per second the phones in question can push:

The clear winners are the Fascinate and Nexus S. The next best are the Apple iPhone4 and iPad on the Pro benchmark, while on the Egypt benchmark the TMobile products are third and fourth.

CPU matters hugely (compare iPhone 3GS, 4, iPad, same GPU, different CPU), but the scaling is much greater on the Pro benchmark (better CPU gives almost 3x the megapixels per second) than on the Egypt benchmark (about 1.7x).

Resolution comes at a price in framerate. But you're Anandtech readers, you knew that. Right?Reply

The graphics in this app don't look to good. I think it is directly testing the shaders and not pushing fill rate at all. Which would put iOS devices at a major disadvantage, since Apple is using the same crappy OpenGL ES 2.0 stack that they use on Macs. Otherwise I'm sure that the SGX 535 is about equal to the Adreno 205 (in terms of shear fill rate and raw processing power), since it was over twice as fast as the Adreno 200 in earlier benchmarks. And the SGX 540 should completely top the chart by more than it is doing now (Samsung's fault for using crap 3D drivers like Apple)

Also we need resolution relative scores. An iPhone 4 is pushing 4X the res of a 3GS, and 2X the res of the WVGA phones. Which would put it at 12 FPS if it scales perfectly and just about half the SGX 540 which seems realistic.

But still the graphics in this app look terrible. I've played Real Racing 2, Infinity Blade, Rage HD, NOVA 2 and other intensive games on my 3rd gen iPod and they all run at a stable 30 FPS and they all look better than this (better shader usage, more detail, more polygons, etc.).